


Was it for redemption?  Was it for revenge?

by kaige68



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon Compliant, Graphic Death Scene, M/M, Not at all happy, rape/murder of minor character, sad fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 05:19:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10482966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaige68/pseuds/kaige68
Summary: A tale of what might have happened to Vasquez after Rose Creek.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is NOT A HAPPY FIC! Title is from Dorothy's _Gun In My Hand_ , listening to the song made this sad thing happen. (The whole CD makes me think Faraquez.)
> 
> There is mention of rape/murder of an original character. The description of the event is post-event and not overly graphic, but it is still there. There is the death of a major character and it is reasonably graphic.
> 
> Speedy read-through by Asphaltcowgrrl (she had my eternal thanks), all remaining errors a because I am stubborn and lazy.

He sat atop another man's tall horse looking over the crowd in front of him. Hole in his shoulder, rope around his neck.

Vasquez steeled his face, these people knew nothing, ignorant white people waiting for the devil Mexican to meet his maker. People that were gruesome enough, blood thirsty enough that they didn’t even put a sack on a man’s head when they hanged him. They wanted to see the whole ugly event as the life choked out of him.

He watched the crowd. There was a pretty little girl in the front, smiling at him. Her hair and skin were darker than the others who looked at him with malice. She had on bright clothes and her hair was well brushed, iron curled. Luciana looked as lovely as she had when she had turned fifteen. But then, he supposed, she would never turn sixteen, so she would always be that lovely.

_”She is only fourteen!” Antonio protested to his older brother._

_“She’ll be fifteen in two weeks. That’s how old Mariana was when I married her.” Manuel explained, not nearly as drunk as his brother. He swiveled quickly, extending a pointed finger to Vasquez. “You are not good enough for her. Do not encourage her so much.”_

_“Luciana or Mariana?” Vasquez played stupid then laughed loudly with Antonio while Manuel scowled._

_“Stay away from my wife **and** my sister.” He stormed off leaving his ranch hands alone._

_Vasquez hadn’t encouraged Luciana. He knew better. Her family would find her a nice rich rancher who would give her the life she should have. Not a hut on the plains where she would cook, clean, and wash all day while he herded the cattle. She was sweet, cute, and made him feel like he might be more than he thought he was. But he knew better than to encourage her, he just tried to do it without being mean._

_Her brother, on the other hand, Vasquez wanted to encourage Antonio. But that was another tale._

_Then they’d gone over the border into Texas just before breeding season. There was a rancher that Manuel was friendly with who was interested in selling off part of his herd. The three of them traveled for most a day, aware that Luciana followed behind them, trying to not be seen._

_They’d circled back just outside of the Texan town. Manuel had admonished her, threatened to punish her, but had escorted her to their hotel. They took her with them to meet the rancher, they brought her to dinner with them in the hotel, and then Manuel and Antonio had brought Luciana to her room where she was told to stay until they came for her in the morning._

_The three men went for a drink. Or several. They were slightly shunned by the locals, but their money was good, so they were left to their own devices. Until Luciana showed up. Manuel was furious. Antonio just laughed. A ranger approached them, took off his hat and bowed to her. Flattered her, spoke in a mixture of stilted Spanish and English. Suggested that her brothers let her stay and see the sights._

_The hair on the back of Vasquez’s neck stood on end, Luciana hedged closer to him, clearly uncomfortable as well. He suggested, politely and quietly, that she go back to her room. Luciana nodded and let Manuel lead her away._

_Vasquez let his eyes follow the ranger as he went back to his table. He meant to keep an eye on the man… He meant to, but Antonio flirted a bit more than usual, alluded to the fact that while Manuel brought Luciana home, he and Vasquez would be traveling alone with the cattle. Vasquez became lost in thought, in drink, and in hope._

_In the morning Manuel stormed through their door in a panic. Luciana was nowhere to be found. Her clothing was in her room, but the door was unlocked and no one in the hotel had seen her. They followed Manuel to the front desk, and again the man explained that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Vasquez didn’t trust him._

_They found her body behind the dry goods store. Bruises ruining her face. Her arms and neck clearly showing the handprints where she’d been held down, where the life had been choked from her body. Her nightdress in tatters and askew on her body._

_Manuel righted her clothing, pulled her lifeless body into an embrace, and wailed out questioning both God and man. Antonio just stood in a stupefied shock._

_Vasquez saw red. He hadn’t encouraged Luciana, he hadn’t wanted her. He respected her though, wanted better for her. She was a close to a sister as he would ever get. He loved her in that way. He stormed off in search of the ranger._

_“You did that!” He bellowed when he found the man._

_“Did what?” Standing at the bar, surrounded by friends, the white man smiled, played dumb._

_“You did that to Luciana!” He couldn’t put description to it, as though calling it rape and murder would make it more horribly real._

_“Your sweet little friend?” He smiled in a way that Vasquez would come to associate with evil. “I made a woman out of her.”_

_Antonio flew past Vasquez. He hadn’t even known the man had followed him. Vasquez caught him before he reached the law man. “No, Antonio.”_

_Every gun in the bar was drawn on them, except the ranger. The man kept his smile. “That’s right. You listen to your man there, Antonio. She was just a little Mexican whore who had a good time last night.” He turned and reached for something on the bar, showing off the scratches on his neck that hadn’t been there the night before. “She gave almost as good as she got, but if you think you can come after a Texas ranger over some little brown girl who was begging for a good fuck, you'd best think again.”_

_Vasquez pulled Antonio back toward the door, watched the guns get put away. If Antonio went after the man. If he punched the ranger or shot at the man, Antonio would be hanged. As well connected as Manuel might be in Mexico, it wouldn’t be enough there. Vasquez watched the ranger laugh at their retreat, listened to the man’s friends laugh with him. He pushed Antonio out the door then turned with speed he hadn’t known he possessed until then. He shot the gun out of the hand of the only man still drawn, and then Vasquez shot the ranger._

_He stole the first horse he could find and rode north as fast as possible._

Luciana smiled again from the front of the crowd. She dropped a small curtsy as if in thanks then turned and made her way through the throng. Twisting and turning, never touching any of them. They never noticed her. She never touched their lives like she had Vasquez’s.

He had run long and hard. Hiding in places where he would never have considered before. 

It wasn’t as though he had lived well before. Even at Antonio’s family's ranch, he had only been a vaquero. He slept in the bunk house. He hadn’t had prospects. If he were good and lucky (and he had always been both), he might become foreman if the ranch prospered enough to let both Manuel and Antonio to have leisure filled lives.

But in the wake of killing the ranger, in the three plus years that had passed, rooming with the dead man where Sam Chisolm had found him wasn’t even the worst situation. He’d killed a man - an animal of a man - but he deserved the caves and wet and rotted places.

And then he found a reason to think better of himself. Vasquez narrowed his eyes and snorted ruefully from the saddle-less strange horse while the sheriff and judge droned on about what he had been charged with and found guilty of, without benefit of an honest trial.

Looking over his death audience, Vasquez watched someone bump their way to the front. Nudging this person or that. The people not complaining, not even seeming to notice, just stepping aside as the man moved forward. When he was in front of the deputies, the man adjusted his hat, then looked up with a smile. Pale, ruddy hair, and self-confidence. It couldn’t be anyone but Joshua Faraday. The man raised one eyebrow at Vasquez and appeared to be on the verge of laughing. 

Vasquez shook his head as if to say - Don’t save me.

Seeming to slouch where he stood, Faraday’s body language replied back - As if I would.

_They had the one night._

_It had built up over the course of the week that they’d known each other. Their in-auspicious meeting with the racial slur was an old memory quickly, but they hadn’t come together until it felt desperate, as though they wouldn’t both make it through the next day._

_A frantic blurred time line of sweat and saliva and ejaculate. The sun rose finding them in each other’s arms. It set on their fears bearing fruit. Vasquez had almost said love, he’d seen it in Faraday’s eyes too. But Joshua had kissed him again, stretched warm skin over Vasquez’s body, and the words didn’t need to be said._

_It was something he’d regretted as he rode out of Rose Creek with Sam and Red. Faraday had died to save him. To save all of them, in truth. To be a hero, to be praiseworthy, to be a martyr to an extent. But Vasquez knew the man too well, Joshua was selfish. He’d done it to save Vasquez, not the children and the widows. If Faraday had let him say the words, even in Spanish…_

Faraday gestured to the lawmen, as if asking what was taking so long. Vasquez didn’t know, hadn’t been paying attention to them. He just let his mind roll through his past, let the ghosts of his life come forward. Or Joshua Faraday wouldn’t have been standing in front of him, being seen by no one but the sentenced man.

_Sam and Red Harvest had decided to travel together. They’d let Vasquez tag along. They picked up bounties, they righted small wrongs, they pitied their brother in arms._

_There were several occasions where Vasquez had laughed at his own humorous thoughts about how he made a much better drunk than Faraday had. Perhaps he couldn’t ride as well drunk, couldn’t drink as much, but he felt his strength was at getting drunk quicker, and on cheaper stuff._

_They weren’t welcomed everywhere. Three men who were clearly not white. He laughed one night about how Billy would have rounded them out better. Neither of the other two laughed. Vasquez was sure Faraday would have laughed. They tried to move quickly through the more bigoted towns._

_Red had saved his life. They were camping out in the open, fire going, small game cooking. Sam had stepped away to relieve himself. Vasquez found himself looking into the barrel of a gun belonging to another duly sworn warrant officer. In his peripheral vision he watched Sam walk back into the firelight with his hands high and a gun at his back._

_They explained that they knew who Vasquez was, that they knew Sam and how he’d be going in as well to face collusion charges. Then arrows began to rain down on the campsite. They were given the chance to scatter and escape. Two days later, Vasquez rode away from his friends._

_“He wouldn’t have stood for you giving up like this.” Sam told him._

_“He?” Vasquez tried to seem more drunk than he was._

_“Faraday.” Red supplied._

_Vasquez sighed and stoppered the bottle. Maybe Joshua wouldn’t have wanted him to give up. But Vasquez had nothing left to give up. His freedom was temporary. His innocence and the chance at a normal life were gone the moment he pulled the trigger on the ranger. His chance at love was blown with a stick of dynamite. There would be no sweet wife to have children and work some land with. There would be no brash gambler to cover his back and keep him warm on a cold night._

_Perhaps if Faraday was standing next to him, the man would tell him not to give up. But then Faraday would be standing next to him, and Vasquez would have something to not give up._

_He appreciated what Sam and Red had done for him. He told them so, and then rode away._

Vasquez watched another man walk through the crowd. This man the people intentionally made space for. Sam Chisolm spoke to the rangers, the sheriff, the judge. He probably made a good argument too. 

The condemned man tore his eyes away from the pleas being made on his behalf. His eyes scanned the tops of buildings. He met the indian’s eyes across the distance, shook his head. Then Vasquez interrupted the discussion on the ground. “Gracias.” He said, and shook his head within the noose again. 

Chisolm stepped toward him, patted his leg and Vasquez saw the understanding in his eyes that he knew this was Vasquez’s Gatling gun. 

He turned his eyes back to Faraday who was silent at the front of the crowd. He watched as Sam moved off and Red climbed down out of sight.

_He was drunk. So drunk he probably wouldn’t be able to make it to his room if he’d bothered to rent one. He’d tried to walk to the stable, tried to get out of the street, but his limbs were doing what the whisky told them and not what Vasquez wanted._

_When the deputy grabbed him and headed him to the jail cell he’d been a bit grateful to be getting out of the night, off the street. Until he’d recognized the sheriff as he man whose gun Vasquez had shot out of his hand a lifetime before._

There was a sharp sound behind him. A hand hitting the horse’s hind quarters. The horse bolted. His body went forward. The rope tightened. His body jerked back. His hands scrambled to try and reach his neck, they were tied behind him. There was panic, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t reach the rope at his neck, he couldn’t get air in, his feet moved in the air, trying to touch ground, trying to get hold. Fear and no air. His fingers and head felt tight and blue. His chest felt heavy. He needed to breathe. He needed to breathe.

There were gasps from the people watching. “Now that’s a shame.” He heard. “A slow death is no less than what he deserves for killing a ranger.” came another voice. 

Still he tried to inhale, or touch the ground, or… anything. Just desperate for anything.

And then Faraday was in front of him, smiling like he won a bet. When he reached forward, Vasquez took his hand and thought it was strange that he was able to move his arms.

“I’ve been waiting for you.” Faraday supplied.

Vasquez merely smiled and moved closer. 

“Would have liked to wait a bit longer, but you’re here now.”

Vasquez started to turn around, wanting to look behind him. 

Faraday led him through the people who were starting to disperse. “Nothing to see there. It’s better if you don’t look.”

Feeling the truth in the words, Vasquez smiled at his Guero. “I missed you.”

“‘Course you did.” Faraday tugged at the hand he held, smoothed his thumb over Vasquez’s knuckles, and walked them both into the sunset.

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone in the fandom has been so wonderfully nice and encouraging - THANK YOU ALL!


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